Currently working on a scene where the RedSpec WET (for Victoria4) is applied but regardless of what I try it's always looking like a thick coating of oil instead of a sweaty droplet kind of look.. I've tried a lot of various settings and variations with differing results..

I'd love to hear what others might have tried and found to work well all the time (kind of 'go-to settings').. With hours long renders to see if it this or that setting works, it would be a time saver if someone could lend a guiding hand.. stuff like what works best, PMC or Path Lighting, this type of light or that type of light.. angles, colours, etc..

Current rendering another test render using PMC, and specular node setting of 0.1 in the 2nd of 1st materials.. looking like less of an oil coating but still got a ways to go to see what it will look like in the end..

Since the RedSpec TGX Wet beta shaders are very complex in their setup, and due to the fact that we tailored them to look best with HDRi maps, there is sort of a steep learning curve with them.Furthermore, we included the skin shader "inside" the wet shader - which is something we will be doing entirely differently with RedSpec TGX Wet for Genesis 3, since we're separating skin from wet shader with that.

Generally, try to avoid overpowered mesh lights and Octane Daylight, as these are usually too strong and give you that "oily" look you describe.

TRRazor wrote:Since the RedSpec TGX Wet beta shaders are very complex in their setup, and due to the fact that we tailored them to look best with HDRi maps, there is sort of a steep learning curve with them.Furthermore, we included the skin shader "inside" the wet shader - which is something we will be doing entirely differently with RedSpec TGX Wet for Genesis 3, since we're separating skin from wet shader with that.

Generally, try to avoid overpowered mesh lights and Octane Daylight, as these are usually too strong and give you that "oily" look you describe.

Many thanks! Just donated towards the cause and shall try the next pass with the HDRi lights listed on your DA page.. (now must figure out how to put them to use, I'm not understanding the docs on this subject well.. =(

First test render using standard methods looking rather decent after an hour (of 6 hours) render on a Titan X..

PS: Croid, what a difference THAT HDRi made to the whole image and the whole process! wow. And it's reduced the over all render time from a projected 8 hours to a 2 hour projection time.. dang! And now it's looking like it's should be..

Quick question though.. I've often seen in the documentation and referrals to change the ISO setting for getting the red out or changing the lighting effect but I've not been able to find that setting anywhere within Octane plugin for Poser.. (Windows 10).. can you shed a little light on that one?

TRRazor wrote:Glad I could help with the lights - and thanks for the generous donation

When you say "getting the red out" do you mean hot pixels in your scene?Or does it mean that the extremities of your character are glowing in a reddish tint?

I do get some 'fire flies?" hot pixels in some renders but from what I've read it's most likely due to the lights being too bright or in need of changing the film ISO etc (where or how could I change the ISO setting in Octane?!) But also changing the Caustic Blur setting to 1.0 and / or selecting Hot Pixel Removal to 0.7 as well.. this does help but I'm not knowledgeable enough in this to know what which works best etc..

The RED in the skin is when I use a very dark skin tone on a model, the extremities of the limbs glow red almost like someone put a flash light behind your ears and you can see your ears glowing in the dark.. I reduced that significantly by using your HDRi lights AND lowering the transmission node level in the 1st of the 1st material level of each body part.. lowering it to 0.3 as suggested in the docs seems to do the trick well. I think I have this issue resolved based on the renders I've done today.

However, in regards to HDRi lights in your package.. I've used them before and have a slim level of knowledge on how or what they do to create the light in Octane.. I need to use it in a story line where the camera would rotate around the characters in a scene.. Characters are in the centre of a large space, and the HDRi light works great for this project.. However, when I rotate the camera around the scene to 'look' at the models from a different angle, the lighting is a fixed source of origin which may or may not put the highlight (something like a key light) in the right direction for my needs. Is there a way to rotate the lighting with the camera? I'm not sure if I am explaining this properly or if it makes sense.. ?

The ISO setting was removed from the OctanRender plug-ins not too long ago.The only way to reduce light power and still have the scene being bright is to compensate with the Exposure setting in the Render Settings.

Using the Hotpixel Removal node was already a good start to reduce the fireflies. It really only happens due to overpowered lights in your scene though.

The RED in the skin is when I use a very dark skin tone on a model,

That's because we tailored the skin shader to work with caucasian skin - you can easily fix this by increasing the "Scale" value in the "Medium" to a higher number - say 500-600 should do the trick for most dark skinned characters.

You would have to rotate the HDRi-map with the camera in order to achieve the effect in animation, that you're looking for.You can do this by going into the environment tab of OctaneRender, then head to the Projection / Mesh Projection setting and in the drop-down box, set that to "Spherical Projection".Now set the drop-down box below that to "3D Transformation"

This should give you new slider nodes to work with, and you want to look at the "Rotation Y" one for what you're looking for.

TRRazor wrote:The ISO setting was removed from the OctanRender plug-ins not too long ago.The only way to reduce light power and still have the scene being bright is to compensate with the Exposure setting in the Render Settings.

Using the Hotpixel Removal node was already a good start to reduce the fireflies. It really only happens due to overpowered lights in your scene though.

The RED in the skin is when I use a very dark skin tone on a model,

That's because we tailored the skin shader to work with caucasian skin - you can easily fix this by increasing the "Scale" value in the "Medium" to a higher number - say 500-600 should do the trick for most dark skinned characters.

You would have to rotate the HDRi-map with the camera in order to achieve the effect in animation, that you're looking for.You can do this by going into the environment tab of OctaneRender, then head to the Projection / Mesh Projection setting and in the drop-down box, set that to "Spherical Projection".Now set the drop-down box below that to "3D Transformation"

This should give you new slider nodes to work with, and you want to look at the "Rotation Y" one for what you're looking for.

Many thanks! I used all your tips and suggestions and what a difference it made.. Much appreciated!